


The Abyss Also Gazes

by hangdog



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Dark, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Incest, M/M, Psychological Torture, Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 09:42:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15192059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hangdog/pseuds/hangdog
Summary: Trapped as a golden statue in Bill Cipher’s hands, Ford struggles to distinguish what is real while his worst nightmares come to life.





	The Abyss Also Gazes

Ford has always had a tenuous connection to reality. Thirty years between dimensions irreparably altered his perception, and before that, Bill Cipher's lucid dreams blurred the lines of Ford's consciousness. Ford may be back in his home dimension, but his time between planes was not without consequence.

Hallucinations plague Ford wherever he goes. In the basement of his former home, he sees long-dead monsters that he defeated and sampled decades before, risen again and hungry for his flesh. His dreams are torturous whirlwinds of sound and color and memories without end. He experiences entire lifetimes in his dreams, and when he wakes, or when he thinks he wakes, he forgets which life he now lives, where he is, even who he is.

Science is his grounding rod. His wild discoveries and impossible feats must verify themselves within the scientific method, or he knows that they are mere flights of fancy. Phenomena must be repeatable, testable, provable, before Ford accepts them. He has learned to dismiss all faulty sensory perception. Only his intellect is worthy of attention and trust. His consciousness is a tightrope, stretched taut between two extremes of reality and unreality, on which he balances with the knowledge that he will one day fall and lose himself in unknowable chaos. This is the price of the knowledge that he bartered from Bill. Even a mind as immense as Ford's is too small to contain the universe. The madness of his dreams escapes into his waking days, bleeding through the cracks in his head, grinding his focus to a dull edge.

He is dreaming now. In his dream, he is a statue of gold. He is immobile. This aligns with the cessation of motor function typical of deep sleep, and so Ford assumes for now that this is not reality. He experiences emotions of unease and panic related to the idea that the dimensional rift has opened and the concurrent notion that Bill has emerged as a physical form. He can obtain no sensory input to confirm or disprove this idea. For now, he must be skeptical.

Where is he now? He is alone. His vision is gone. He feels nothing. He is immobile. He cannot return to his tried and true method of pinching himself to ascertain that he is not in the mindscape. Fear eats at the edges of Ford’s mind. In the absence of physicality, the emotion is overwhelming. He remembers the rift in the sky, Bill’s triumphant laughter, Dipper’s desperate questions.

Someone calls, “Sixer!”

Ford tries to turn and look but of course he cannot. A weight bears down on his chest. He can’t breathe. A massive, dark shadow looms over him. Violent tremors wrack his entire body, as if someone is shaking him.

Again, “Sixer!”

The familiar voice breaches Ford’s panic.

“Stanley,” he sighs in relief. He can move again, talk again. Light reaches his retinas, dim and green, from the dormant monitors of his machines.

Stanley is wearing an undershirt and a scowl. He looks more like Dad than ever. “You were screaming in your sleep,” Stanley grumbles. “You’re gonna wake up the kids, and I’m outta midnight waffles. Mabel won’t get to sleep without ‘em.”

Ford sits up. He pushes his hair out of his face and his hand comes back slick with cold sweat. “Sleep paralysis,” Ford says, mostly to reassure himself that it is a simple physiological issue and not a sign that Bill has returned.

“Nothing a belt of scotch won’t fix.” Stanley sloshes a blurry, pungent bottle in his face.

Ford pushes him away. “I’ll be fine.” He paws at the nightstand, finding his glasses. The readouts on his monitors come into focus. The patterns are consistent with a closed interdimensional rift. Everything is fine.

Stanley doesn’t go. “More for me,” he says, tilting back the bottle. He drinks deeply and belches. “Come on,” he urges again, “you really wanna be up all night?”

“May as well. I have work to do.” Ford peels back his sheets and steps into his boots. He sleeps in his clothes. His shirt sticks to his armpits and chest, but he knows he’ll forget his grimy skin soon enough when he returns to his calculations. In the aftermath of his unpleasant dream, his concerns about Bill and the rift flood back more strongly than ever. He will have to be content with that restless nap for now—he won’t sleep for days. He staggers into his chair, wheels over to his workstation, and places his hands on the keypad.

Stanley remains nearby. He watches Ford input code for several minutes, drinking in silence, before he blandly states, “You’re gonna kill yourself if you keep this up.”

Ford is accustomed to negativity from his brother, but something about the frank pronouncement chills Ford’s spine. He adjusts his glasses and rotates in his chair. “ _Everyone_ will be dead if I don’t complete this work. You should understand how important this is, Stanley! You’re one of three people who successfully completed an interdimensional gateway.”

“Yeah, well, I took breaks.” Stanley walks over to Ford’s workstation and leans on the edge with his elbow. He places most of his weight on it, more than necessary. Ford can tell he started drinking hours ago. “Come on. I thought you weren’t mad at me anymore.”

Ford sighs. “I’m not.”

Stanley grabs the extra desk chair and sits down, straddling it backwards. “But you still want me out of the shack next month.”

“I built  _my house_ with the money  _I earned_ from my research!” Ford hunches over the keypad. “Just because you squatted here—“

“Hey! Who paid off the mortgage on this shitheap? I worked my ass off so that you’d have somewhere to come back to. Without me, this whole place woulda been repossessed, and you’d still be floating around in the wherever, doing God knows what, with your thumb up your ass!”

Ford knows what Stanley wants. He can’t bring himself to thank him or apologize. He glowers at the monitor, coding in silence. He can feel the heat of Stanley’s glare on the side of his face.

“Is that how you’re gonna be? After everything?” Stanley sets the bottle down on the floor with a clink. “I did it all for you, brother. I devoted thirty years of my life to bringing you back.” Reflected in Ford’s glasses, he sees Stanley cross his burly arms. “I thought maybe you’d finally forgive me. I ruined your life, and you ruined mine. We’re square.”

Ford notices an error in his last line of code. Stanley is distracting him. He curses. He tries to focus, but the characters on the screen elude him for some reason. Maybe he is still tired. He has lost his place. He has to go back to the beginning.

Stanley rolls his chair towards Ford’s. “I never got used to being on my own. It wasn’t the same without you around. Having you back, it’s what I always wanted. I feel, uh,” his voice is huskier than usual, “I feel  _complete_ again. Maybe you were your own guy, but I always knew that I was just half of a dynamic duo.”

The corners of Ford’s vision are always blurry, outside the field of his lenses, but now they’re swimming. He swallows. He refuses to cry in front of Stanley. He needs to focus on his work, but the screen is frustratingly illegible.

“Don’t give me that cold shoulder crap.”

Ford stands up. “I need coffee.” He has the pot in the corner of the room, but Stanley grabs his arm before he can go far.

“Hey!” Ford takes a few steps, and Stanley rolls after him at the end of his arm, chair and all. The sight is so silly that Ford would have laughed, if his stomach didn’t feel like it was about to fall out. “You know how much I had to drink to start spilling my guts like this?”

“Yes, enough to make you think this was a good idea.” Ford struggles to get out of Stanley’s grip. He drags him across the room on the chair. “Let go of me. Let go!”

“No way. I’m never letting go of you again!”

“You have to let  _go,_ Stanley!” Ford rolls his eyes to the ceiling and pinches the bridge of his nose, forcing back tears. “I won’t  _be_ here forever! I have important research! Dangerous research! If you keep holding on…”

“Hey.” Stanley finally gets out of the chair. His grip is gentler now but Ford has stopped struggling. His other hand touches Ford’s shoulder. “I told you to have a drink. It’d give you an excuse for getting all weepy on me.”

Ford inhales sharply, centering himself. He finally turns to look at Stanley. The monitors reflect in Stanley’s glasses, obscuring his eyes, but his mouth twists with sadness and a wet streak slips down Stanley’s trembling jaw.

Ford feels himself crack a thin, shaky smile. “Wimp.”

“You too, tough guy.” Stanley embraces him. They haven’t hugged since they were little kids. Ford remembers it: he woke up from a nightmare, and Stanley hugged him and said not to worry, that he would punch the monsters in the face if they hurt his brother. The memory makes Ford’s whole body spasm with a sob. He tries to muffle his hiccups in Stanley’s shoulder.

Stanley squeezes him. Ford hugs him back. They must look ridiculous. He doesn’t care. Stanley’s hand slaps his back in the awkward sibling hug tradition. Then, it settles between his shoulder blades.

Ford doesn’t mind it at first. Stanley must also be lingering on memories of their childhood. They protected each other in their own ways. While Ford kept Stanley out of trouble with his quick wits, Stanley fought tooth and nail to defend Ford from the rougher parts of life. Stanley had always been bigger and stronger since Dad pushed him into boxing lessons, and he always used that skill to watch Ford’s back.

Stanley rubs Ford’s back with his palm, soothingly. It’s not necessary—after the initial outburst, Ford feels better. Ford pushes against Stanley’s chest to separate them, but Stanley’s arms only clamp down harder.

“All right,” Ford groans, “that’s enough. I’m sorry. I forgive you, Stanley.” Those should be the magic words, and yet Stanley still doesn’t release him. The tightness of his embrace begins to unnerve Ford. “Stanley. Let go.”

“I told you,” Stanley growls, “I’m never letting go of you again.”

Ford’s skin prickles with discomfort. “You had too much to drink,” he repeats, shoving Stanley’s broad shoulders. Stanley hangs on to him in an overwhelming bear hug. “You should go to bed.”

“Good idea.” Stanley sidesteps towards Ford’s bed, dragging Ford with him, practically swinging Ford off his feet. Ford stumbles. If Stanley wasn’t half-carrying him, he would have fallen.

“Not  _my_ bed, stupid.” Ford tries to force some levity into his voice, mostly to convince himself that everything is all right. He can feel the icy creep of paranoia once again. Trust no one. Not even your brother. “I need to work, and I don’t want to listen to you snore—“

“So sleep with me.” Stanley wrestles Ford on to the mattress. For someone so inebriated, he manages Ford with shocking efficiency, pinning him down on his back in no time at all.

Ford is too confused to fight. He’s not sure what’s happening. The experience is too bizarre. Worse still, if he fights, that means he’s admitting that something has gone horribly wrong. “Get off,” he orders flatly, attempting to conceal his rising panic.

“Good idea.” Stanley grabs his throat. His five fingers sink into Ford’s flesh. The heat is real. The pressure is real.  _No. No._ Sensory stimuli cannot be trusted. This may not be real. This cannot be real.

Stanley’s face descends over his. Ford’s glasses are foggy and smeared with his tears, but he can see every detail of his twin’s mouth, of Stanley’s lips as they purse. He is too horrified to move.

Stanley kisses him. Stanley’s stubble rasps against Ford’s depilation-singed jaw. Stanley’s lips are cracked and dry and astoundingly timid. The tip of Stanley’s tongue swipes between Ford’s lips without breaching them.

Stanley settles his weight on Ford’s hips. There is something hard caught between them— _no._ Ford’s resistance bursts out all at once. He yells unintelligibly and swings his fist at Stanley’s face, but Stanley ducks and takes it in the ear, and grabs Ford’s wrists, and flattens his entire front against Ford’s, wrapping his legs around Ford’s thighs, tangling him up in his body, overwhelming him with his bigger frame. Ford knows he is fitter than Stanley now, he knows that he can move faster and run further and jump higher, but Stanley is bigger,  _stronger,_ he always has been, without even trying, damn him.

Ford yells again. Stanley shushes him. “You wanna wake the kids? You want them to see us like this?”

“Oh, God, get off of me.” Ford can barely breathe. He doesn’t recognize his own voice. “Just get off of me and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

“But I’m already here.” Stanley rocks his hips, rutting on him, reminding Ford that he is bigger in every way. Ford is wearing his work pants but Stanley is only in his boxers, and the wet tip of his penis drags across Ford’s groin. “You have no idea how much I thought about this when you were lost, brother. I wanted to bring you back just for this.”

“No.” Ford clenches his eyes shut. “This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.”

Stanley lets go of his wrist and starts to reach for Ford’s groin, but Ford fights him, and so Stanley balls up his fist and slams it into Ford’s temple. The pain is as vivid and wretched as everything else. Ford, dazed, feels Stanley manipulate his body, unbutton his pants. He tries to sit up and Stanley hits him again. This time, his vision goes black for a distressing length of time.

“I didn’t want it to be like this,” Stanley says. His voice sounds as if it’s coming from the end of a tunnel. Fabric squeezes around Ford’s wrists, trapping them behind his back. Stanley has bound him. Sailor’s knots, like they learned for their old shipbuilding project. Ford is going to be sick. Stanley is still talking. “I thought you would like it. We were always so close.”

“Stanley, please,” Ford croaks. “Something is wrong. You’re—you’re possessed,” he realizes. It’s the only explanation, if this isn’t just another waking nightmare. “Listen to me! This isn’t you.”

“You’re wrong.” Stanley yanks Ford’s pants off his legs, knocking his boots away in the process. “I dreamed about this. I always wanted to be with you. I’m the only one who can keep you safe. There’s a reason we never got married to anyone else.” Just like before, Stanley’s gravelly voice is low with emotion. Ford has to force himself to remember that  _this is not Stanley,_ no matter how genuine he sounds. “We belong with each other." Stanley rolls Ford’s shirt up to his armpits and caresses his chest tenderly. “And I’m going to make you realize it.”

“ _Stop.”_ Ford injects every ounce of sternness and authority that he possesses into that order. “I will not participate in this. I do not  _want_ this.”

“You will.” Stanley kisses Ford’s sternum. Ford tries to pull back his leg and kick Stanley off of him, but as Stanley lays between Ford’s thighs, Ford can’t get the necessary leverage. He hammers his heels into Stanley’s back. “Oof!” Stanley reaches back and grabs Ford’s ankles. He spreads Ford’s legs wide. Ford struggles, whipping his body from side to side. Stanley loses his grip on one of Ford’s feet in the fray, and Ford immediately kicks him in the jaw, throwing Stanley off the bed.

“Stay away from me!”

Stanley falls on his hands and knees, clutching his face, licking blood from his teeth. He looks up. His glasses are askew. Ford searches his eyes, and his heart stops when he finds Stanley’s pupils round and reactive, without a trace of demonic influence. Stanley is apparently acting of his own will.

“Let me make you feel good, brother.” Stanley lunges, grabbing Ford’s ankles. Ford kicks him in the chin but the liquor must numb Stanley to the pain and he barely reacts. Stanley crawls back on to the bed and flips Ford on to his stomach. He pins Ford’s legs under his knees. “God damn, you look great like this.” He grips Ford’s bare ass, squeezing and rolling it in his palms. “Did you ever get laid at that fancy college of yours? I bet you didn’t.”

Horror thickens Ford’s thoughts to sludge. He can barely breathe. Stanley’s thick fingers spread over his exposed skin. His thumbs dig into Ford’s buttocks, exposing his anus. Ford writhes desperately and has no success in freeing himself. Being unable to see Stanley would be an infinitesimal mercy, if Stanley would only stop  _speaking._

“Like a virgin,” Stanley mocks him. Ford feels him slide down his body, feels Stanley’s heavy chest resettle on his legs, and then, there is an unwelcome, overpowering sensation. Slick, soft, wet, and warm—Stanley’s tongue slides over his flesh, breaching his rectum, licking between his buttocks. The tip of Stanley’s tongue slides within him and circles his anus, fighting the ring of muscle even as Ford tightens instinctively. A diaphragmatic groan tears loose from deep within Ford. Stanley hums against his flesh, tangles his arms up in Ford’s legs, and spreads Ford’s buttocks wide with his thumbs, forcing his tongue more deeply into Ford, until Ford feels his nose and chin flush against his coccyx and perineum, respectively, and his teeth scraping the skin of his anus, prising him open, as his tongue thrusts and twists within him. The sensation is like being eaten alive from the inside out. It is not painful, it is in fact the opposite, and the pleasure causes Ford to shudder and cry out in immense suffering.

“Yeah, you like that?” Stanley growls, mistaking Ford’s anguish for encouragement. “Wait ‘til I give you the real thing.”

Ford has been through worse. He has. He  _has._ He once stumbled across a dimension of pure agony, a blinding Hell, in which each cell in his body rejected its own existence and signaled his nerves with cancerous pain, and he lost track of himself for countless hours, days, years, until by some fluke he found the pattern in the pulsing torment and managed to eke out a path to freedom, at which point he realized that the entire dimension was a false perception, and that a parasite had merely stimulated the appropriate pain centers in his brain. Real or not, the pain was worse, far worse, than his brother moaning and huffing against him. It  _was._ It was worse than the feeling in his cock, now, his treacherous flesh, tumescent and longing, drooling drops of semen on his sheets. He can survive this. He can overcome this.

Stanley’s jagged thumbnail scrapes Ford’s anal ring and punctures inside. Ford screams. “That’s it,” Stanley says, submerging his thumb in Ford up to the knuckle. He bends his thumb at the joint and bears down, and Ford thrashes in an attempt to escape. “Chill out,” Stanley says. The pressure leaves Ford’s anus and returns, far more overwhelming. There are two broad fingers twisting and stretching him, and Stanley says, “You’re only gonna make it hurt more.”

“Doesn’t make it real,” Ford murmurs to himself. “Stimulating the nerves doesn’t make it real.”

Stanley laughs. God, it sounds so much like him. His fingers vacate from Ford. “Give it a rest, Sixer.” The sensations cessate, pain and pleasure and all. For a split second, Ford believes that it’s over, that he has made sense of the pattern, that he is about to wake up.

Then, Stanley’s rigid penis plunges into the depths of his bowels, and Ford knows another level of damnation. The past and future vanish along with all question of reality, and there is only the undeniable present, in which his brother is raping him.

Stanley clambers over him, drunkenly repositioning himself. His penis falls out of Ford, and he jams it back inside with the use of his hand. Halitotic breath steams past Ford’s face as Stanley pants into his ear. “It’ll start feeling good soon,” Stanley promises.

It never does. Stanley punches Ford’s anal ring with his penis, burning the vascular skin with overeager friction. Ford feels like his insides are being pulled out through his rectum. The heat and solidity of Stanley’s shaft produce an uncomfortable burning, tearing sensation, and Ford begins to panic as he feels liquid smearing the backs of his thighs.

“Let me take care of you,” Stanley says, caressing Ford in his overwhelming grip as he dominates his body. “I always wanted to take care of you. You’re like my little brother,” he pants, thrusting deep within Ford, “more like my little brother than my twin.”

The mounting force behind Stanley’s thrusts begins to drive out the miserable sobs that Ford is trying to silence within himself. Eventually, the pain turns to numbness as Stanley’s eager motions wear out Ford’s nerves. Stanley twists around on top of Ford, circling his hips and attempting to stab towards his prostate, but his clumsy attempts fail to arouse Ford as intended.

Ford narrows the focal point of his perception to the concept of survival. He has no more complex brain functions than an insect, a moth or wasp, a bedbug, a base creature feeding on the blood of higher self, fitting because they breed through traumatic insemination, the males stabbing their needle genitalia into the stomach of any male or female within range, injecting genetic material directly into the blood, just as Stanley is injecting genetic material back into Ford, who ironically has the same, the same genes, the same blood, they split from the same embryo, but something happened, something went wrong, and Ford always knew something went wrong with his half, Stanley was the normal one, Ford had the wrong number of fingers, and maybe that’s why Stanley can do this to him, like it’s natural, because Ford was always wrong, so wrong that he couldn’t live in his own dimension, so wrong that he’s thinking back now through every mistake he’s ever made and asking for help from the one, the one, the eye that sees all, that can fix this, that can change reality, that tempted Ford here, with his brother, who isn’t real—

Heat infuses Ford’s bowels in a liquid rush. Stanley groans throughout his climax, rumbling his chest against Ford’s back. Their skin sticks and pulls together as Stanley relaxes on top of Ford. “Was it good for you, too?” purrs Stanley.

“Bill,” Ford says, like an invocation. “I know it’s you.”

Stanley yawns big, exactly like he always has, stretching and popping his jaw joints and showing off his capped molars in the process. His softening penis is still within Ford, and his seminal fluid drains around it. “You wanna go with me to the store and get some waffles?”

“Stop,” Ford sobs. “Bill, please.”

Stanley nuzzles his face into the back of Ford’s neck. “You wanna petition to change the law so brothers can get married?”

Ford breaks. “I’ll do anything you want,” he cries, “just  _stop.”_

Every light in the room dies at once. Ford’s senses plunge into an abyssal vacuum. He no longer feels Stanley’s ripe, sweaty body weighing him down, nor the uncomfortable warmth of his bed. He may as well be floating at the bottom of the sea, and while there is no water here to apply unbearable pressure, he still feels as though he’s being squeezed to death from the inside.

Line by line by shimmering golden line, a hollow triangle traces itself into reality in front of Ford. When the three sides connect, the flat shape expands into a three-dimensional pyramid with a small pop and a shower of glittering confetti.

“Congratulations,” says Bill, snatching his top hat out of the preternatural darkness and donning it with a wink of his eye. “You said the magic word!”

Ford can’t find the words to respond, as he has just remembered that he should be covered in Stanley’s fluids, and though they are not real the feelings are an afterimage in his mind, burned into his sensory memory.

“Sooo,” Bill continues, spinning his cane around his hand, “you said  _anything_ , right?”

Ford turns away from Bill. In the emptiness, he eventually rotates back. He knows what Bill wants. Bill has only ever wanted Ford’s servitude, but he rarely plays so dirty to obtain it. Bill’s  _modus operandi_ has always been to act from afar by tilting the first Domino in the chain. Brute force in the pit of Ford’s subconscious is an uncharacteristically bold move.

“Speak up,” Bill prompts him. “Or do you want me to bring him back?”

Stanley’s lustful pants echo in Ford’s mind. Ford tries to cover his face, but he can see through his own hands, his own eyelids. Bill controls everything about this pocket dimension, including Ford’s perception of himself.

“This isn’t real,” Ford answers, his voice trembling as violently as his hands.

Bill smacks himself on the peak with his palm. “Duh! When I took your memories, I didn’t think I was making you stupid, too.”

Ford has to keep him talking. “What’s going on? What’s happening in reality? Where’s Dipper?”

“Hey, maybe  _your brother_ knows where he is,” Bill teases. “Let’s ask him!”

Ford screams for mercy, but Bill snaps his fingers, and suddenly Ford is back on his bed, his arms bound behind his back, pinned under Stanley. Stanley’s slimy, limp penis rests against Ford’s thigh, and his snores ratchet into Ford’s ear.

“I guess we’ll have to wait to find out until he wakes up,” says Bill. The pyramid flits around the room like a hovering drone. “Some real great science you got here! Keep it up, buddy. I’m sure that rift will stay closed forever.”

“Don’t leave me here,” begs Ford, as he struggles to get out from under Stanley. His brother’s heavy arms and legs wrap around him and squeeze.

“Excuse me?” A golden ear pings into existence beside Bill. He cups it theatrically with his hand and leans towards the bed. “Did I just hear you say that you agree to join me?”

Ford looks away. Stanley’s drool slides across his neck and drips down his throat. His brother murmurs softly in his sleep, speaking with blissful happiness about how he is in love with Ford, how he’s going to be with him forever, until Ford learns that he loves Stanley, too.

Bill shrugs, and the ear vanishes in a puff of smoke. “Okay, I can take a hint. I knew you wanted this more than anything. Enjoy the honeymoon, lovebirds!”

Ford doesn’t plead for Bill to wait. He is proud of his own self-control, until Stanley reminds him of the harsh facts of his existence by slurping a kiss on to Ford’s back. Ford focuses, again, on the immediacy of arthropods, simple life, microorganisms, single-celled, mindless. This is not the first time that he has survived through a perversion of reality. This will not last forever. He must be strong.

Stanley’s calloused hand strokes Ford’s ribs. “You’re shaking." He caresses Ford’s nipple. “Don’t be scared. I’ll protect you.”

Ford lets his tears fall.


End file.
